I tend not to make predictions on this blog, but when it comes to the House of Representatives in the 2014 elections, the word ‘prediction’ doesn’t really apply. The Republican Party simply will retain control of the chamber.

It is now one month before Americans go to the polls to vote in the final midterm elections of Barack Obama’s presidency. This first preview post will focus on what looks to be the most important and interesting battleground of this election season: the Senate.

As a foreign observer of American politics, every now and then something will arise that is so alien as to be bordering on incomprehensible. The current Republican-led shutdown of the US government is perhaps the strongest example of this in recent memory.

The United States has long been divided by a fundamental difference of opinion. This is a conflict between those who evaluate ‘American’ or ‘anti-American’ acts based on how they affect American interests, and those who evaluate them on how they reflect American values, as set out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

On the face of it, not much changed last night. After a campaign in which an estimated $2 billion was spent, the White House, Senate and House of Representatives are all in the same hands as they were when polls opened. But in a greater sense, last night signalled a significant shift in the United States; an important election, possibly even on par with Barack Obama’s monumental victory in 2008.

With the election today, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of analysis, statistics and predictions coming from all sides. Spend any amount of time on Twitter, Facebook or a news site and you will hear everything ranging from an Obama landslide to a comfortable Romney win, by way of an electoral college tie. Even the most informed observers of the election appear to put forward wildly different opinions on how today will go, as pollsters contradict each other’s numbers, pundits’ predictions clash and campaigns accuse polling data of being ideological and ‘skewed’. Hopefully this post will go some way towards clearing up some confusion and give non-Americans in particular a better idea of what to expect over the next twenty-four hours.

Watching the vice presidential debate on Thursday night, the informed viewer could not help but be struck with certain impressions about the evening and its differences from its presidential equivalent last week. While last week’s clash saw the Republican challenger take the game to the Democratic incumbent, forcing him into a passive corner, Thursday saw the opposite, with Joe Biden harrying Paul Ryan, challenging his assertions and refusing to allow what he saw as misrepresentations of either side’s policies. It was, as the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald wrote, ‘a pure reversal of the first presidential debate, but on steroids‘.

It is fair to say that the first of this campaign’s presidential debates did not go exactly as anticipated. We were told to expect a policy-light affair, in which the candidates would focus on landing ‘zingers’, and in the end President Obama would win. This did not turn out to be the case. The candidates engaged in real policy discussion, soundbites were surprisingly few and far between, and importantly, unmistakably, Mitt Romney came out on top.